Amazing Sianni Wynn finished her spectacular junior year Sunday with a South Jersey record in the 200 and her 4th All-America honor.
Wynn, who had won the 100 in a wind-legal PR 11.29, came back to place 2nd in the 200 in 23.05 with a legal 0.4 meters-per-second tailwind. Elise Cooper of McDonough School in Owings Mills, Md., won the race 22.44, all-time U.S. No. 7. Cooper, a Texas commit, was the U.S. Under-20 200 champ last year in Eugene.
Wynn broke the South Jersey record of 23.29 set by Timber Creek’s Naylah Jones at last year’s Group 3 state meet at Delsea. Her previous PR was a 23.20 (-0.4) at the Meet of Champions earlier this month on her home track at Pennsauken. She ran 23.31 indoors.
Her time is probably No. 2 in state history with legal wind and fastest in 42 years, since Wendy Vereen of Trenton ran 22.99 at the 1983 Jumbo Elliott Invitational at Villanova.
The state record is listed as 22.96 by four-time Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin at the 2017 state Parochial A meet at Egg Harbor, but it’s inconclusive whether there was an operating wind gauge for her race.
At the 2017 Parochial A state meet at EHT there are “0.0” or “NWI” listed for the 100s, 200s and high hurdles event, and it seems unlikely that the wind readings for the handful of events where the wind was recorded – including girls and boys Group 1 and 4 races – were all 0.0. In the Milesplit video of the race [https://nj.milesplit.com/videos/220508/girls-200-heat-2-npa] you can see a wind gauge with about 50 meters to go on the inside of the track but there’s nobody operating it or taking wind readings.
McLaughlin’s fastest confirmed legal high school time was a 23.53 at the 2016 Union County Championships in Plainfield, which she ran with a 0.3 meters-per-second tailwind.
According to the World Athletics web site, there was a 1.1 wind reading at Villanova for the Jumbo Elliott 200, so I’ll let everyone else decide whether McLaughlin has the legit state record and Wynn is No. 3 all-time or Vereen has it and Wynn is No. 2 all-time. Either way, she’s very fast and only 9-100ths of a second off that 22.96 that may or may not have been legal with a year to go.
Wynn will go into her senior year ranked No. 2 in state history in the 100 at 11.29, No. 2 in the 200 at 23.05 and No. 6 in the 400 at 52.80. She’s the only girl in state history to run that fast for all three sprints.
Indoors, Wynn holds state records in the 55 at 6.73, the 60 at 7.29 and the 200 at 23.31 and she’s No. 4 all-time in the 400 at 54.27.
Wynn’s 23.05 is 8th-fastest ever by a New Jersey native and 3rd-fastest by a South Jersey sprinter, behind Wilson’s Dennisha Page [22.39 in Gainesville last May] and Eastern’s English Gardner [22.62 in 2013 in Los Angeles].
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 